SPECULOOS: Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars (poster)

The 1000 nearest ultra-cool stars (spectral type M6 and latter) represent a unique opportunity for the search for life outside our solar system. Due to their small luminosity, their habitable zone is 30-100 times closer than for the Sun, the corresponding orbital periods ranging from one to a few days. Thanks to this proximity, the transits of a habitable planet are much more probable and frequent than for an Earth-Sun analog, while their tiny size (about 1 Jupiter radius) leads to transits deep enough for a ground-based detection, even for sub-Earth size planets. Furthermore, a habitable planet transiting one of these nearby ultra-cool stars would be amenable for a thorough atmospheric characterization, including the detection of possible biosignatures, notably with the near-to-come JWST. Motivated by these reasons, we have set up the concept of a ground-based survey optimized for detecting planets of Earth-size and below transiting the nearest Southern ultra-cool stars. We present here this concept and its status.